Saint Petersburg has been called home for several renowned artists and musicians, including figures in classical music. Admirers of Russian opera and orchestra should pay a visit to the apartment museum of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a prolific composer and member of the “Russian Five.” This nationalistic group of 19th century composers, which included Mily Balakirev, Modest […]

We asked three participants of our Art and Museums in Russia program in St. Petersburg: “Where in St. Petersburg have you felt the greatest amount of inspiration?” Here are the students and inspiring cityscape locales they chose: Sophia Fisher Sophia Fisher is currently studying Russian as a Second Language with SRAS Saint Petersburg, Russia. […]

Kizhi Pogost and the island on which it stands function as an architecture museum, hosting a number of wooden structures built with traditional Russian designs and construction methods. Restoration and preservation efforts are currently underway at the facility to protect the structures, some of which date to the 17th century. Most tourists arrive to the […]

Muzeum Wojska Polskiego (Polish Army Museum) Aleje Jerozolimskie 3 Ticket Prices: Normal- 15 PLN Reduced- 8 PLN Saturdays- Free Admission Website Warsaw is especially associated with its place in the Second World War, and coming to Poland, I was already aware of that specific era in Poland history. However, I was curious about the other […]

Anna Akhmatova is Saint Petersburg’s most beloved female poet. Her home, tucked behind the portal of a common leafy courtyard, serves as a place of pilgrimage for legions of literary admirers. A literary museum, Akhmatova’s apartment operates as a museum of witness of her complicated and often tragic life as a writer struggling to speak […]

As a historian of World War II with a focus on Holocaust studies, visiting Poland was a must since the atrocities of Hitler’s Final Solution predominately occurred in Poland. Today, there are countless commemorations to the Holocaust on almost every street in Poland, it seems. Museums tell the stories, plaques mark the walls of buildings, […]

(Tour included as part of the Art and Museums program for Summer, 2017) Russia is a vast, diverse nation of many ethnic groups which inhabit drastically different social and geographic spheres. The Russian Museum of Ethnography, located in central Saint Petersburg, serves to catalogue and preserve the many customs of Russia’s numerous cultural subpopulations. Currently […]

Tour included as part of the Art and Museums program – Summer 2017 Tucked neatly away within Staraya Derevnaya just outside the centre of Petersburg sits the Restoration and Storage Centre of the State Hermitage. While it may be only a short metro ride from the bustling Nevsky Prospekt, the Hermitage Storage Building itself is […]

A perfect weekend for me almost always includes a visit to an art gallery, history museum, or a traveling exhibit of some sort. However, trying to drag my family and most friends to museums is next to impossible. Encouraging young adults, adolescents, and elementary children to visit museums and galleries is exhausting, and more than […]

The Kunstkamera is a distinctive blue building set along the Nevsky on Vasilievskiy Island. Among its many claims to fame, the most prominent is that the Kunstkamera was the first museum created for the public in Petersburg; it was established by Peter the Great to house his collection of curiosities. Peter the Great was a […]

Most foreigners in Warsaw tend to the stick to the center of the city and Old Town, with some maybe venturing as far as the Praga district. Being that these areas are mostly discovered and easy to tour — along with being packed with tourists and locals — I decided to start taking trams to […]

Forty years ago, near the dusty shores of the retreating Aral Sea, Communist Party officials visited the Museum of Igor Savitsky. Savitsky, affectionately called “Junkman” by his friends and associates, was an artist. Under the nose of State officials (and sometimes with their funds), he amassed a collection of over eighty thousand banned Russian avant-garde […]